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When Alexander died in 323 b.c., and Ptolemy, one of his generals, took Egypt as his share of the succession, a Gr. state was founded in Egypt. Alexandria became the seat of government in place of Memphis, the last capital of the pharaohs.
Upon the death of Alexander, whose body was deposited in this new city, Alexandria became the regal capital of Egypt, under the Ptolemies, and rose to its highest splendor. During the reign of the first three princes of this name, its glory was at the highest.
Thanks to this ideal location, the city came to dominate many of the key ancient trade routes, controlling valuable resources from the silks of the East to the grains of Egypt itself. The original decision for where to build this city was made by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE.
Alexandria was the second-most important city in the Roman Empire, after Rome itself. It was named for its founder, Alexander the Great, who built the city after his conquest of Egypt (331 B.C.E.) in order to facilitate naval trade and communication with Greece.
Early Egyptian Christianity (like Egypt as a whole in the period from 100 to 450ce) reflects sharp differences between its urban and rural expressions. Alexandria was a vast Greek-speaking cosmopolitan city, with a substantial Jewish community, and a hub of the Roman imperial system.
It sank lower when Cairo became the capital (circa 1000 A.D.), and received its death blow when a sea route to India was discovered by way of the Cape of Good Hope (circa 1500). Today the ancient Alexandria lies entirely under the sea or beneath some later construction.
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Feb 17, 2024 · Ptolemy I (c. 367–283 B.C.E.) established his capital at Alexandria and immediately began to build up the city. Ptolemy’s grandest project, begun in 306 B.C.E., was the Library of Alexandria, a research center that held one million books by the time of Jesus.
